The Shift of Power
by Miss Katonic
Summary: With Voldemort destroyed, a devoted Death Eater has risen above to replace him. With Severus as his second, the new dark lord plans to eradicate the Order by imprisoning Hermione with intentions of extreme interrogation. SSHG.
1. Bartimus Crouch

Disclaimer: I own nothing that sounds familiar to you, dear reader.

Chapter One 

The scream ripped itself out of Hermione's throat as, struggling within her bonds, she saw with wide eyes Harry collapse against the pillar. The dark cloaked figure towered over him, a triumphant laugh trickling from his wicked smile.

"STUPIFY!" Harry's voice echoed through the hall but the bright light that burst from his wand was caught in Voldemort's hand. The dark lord cast the spell aside, his smile never flickering.

"I will kill you, Potter, and end this mad game." He hissed just loud enough for Hermione to hear. Her eyes searched wildly for her wand, which had fallen far from where she laid. With horror she watched Voldemort bring his wand down on Harry as he screeched unintelligible words.

A violently red light exploded from where the two stood. When it reached Hermione it felt as though all her blood and life were drawn from her body and added to the mist of light until it passed over her.

The dungeon became unbearably dark, and the silence pressed all around, stiffening Hermione with fear.

"Harry?"

When her whisper was greeted by the thickening quiet she screamed his name again and again, wrestling with the ropes that held her.

"He's dead, you silly girl."

Hermione froze but her mind still struggled with reality and fear of to whom this strange, cold voice belonged.

"They both are," the voice finished rather briskly, and she felt two hands rest on her side and rather forcefully turned her on her back. With seemingly no effort he lifted her up, an arm under her back and her knees, and continued in a soft voice that made Hermione think that he was talking to himself, "it has been set in motion."

The man continued mumbling to himself as she felt him ascend stairs only to descend another flight. Her mind was snatching about nebulous ideas wildly trying to explain what was happening, but fear kept freezing her thoughts and her voice. Although the stranger had not killed or threatened her yet, that did not prove his innocence, and Hermione was so frightened by the alternative she could scarcely move.

Without warning or explanation Hermione was dropped with a distressing lack of ceremony or dignity. The man that had been carrying her paused his mumbling, as if his thoughts now dominated every ounce of his energy.

Trembling with anxiety, Hermione waited for him to say something or walk away, but he did neither, that she could sense. His breathing became quicker, and more rasping. Something hit the stone floor with a soft thump, followed by an even softer hiss.

Hermione, though confused and thoroughly frightened, still managed to reason about what had just happened. Before she could call out to the stranger, another hiss echoed through the vast darkness. She felt rather than heard the presence of something slip away from her. In the distance a door slammed, and piercing laughter sliced through the blackness. In an instant it stopped, and silence fell heavy all around Hermione.

/\

Severus Snape walked with confident stride down the familiar steps to his office. He nodded in greeting to Igor and Bellatrix, but grimaced after passing. Although Hogwarts had been seized and infested with Death Eaters months ago, Severus still could not overcome the shock of seeing several dark wizards walking down the hall instead of perhaps giggling young women or scheming, pimply boys.

As the follower that had allowed the siege of Hogwarts to be initiated, Severus had been granted first choice (after the Dark Lord, naturally) of living quarters. Unphased by his master's predictable seizure of Dumbledore's office, Severus harbored no bitter feelings and selected his own rooms with no protest.

The invasion of Hogwarts had almost seemed too easy. Lazy, warm summer days put most people at extreme ease and sloth. There were no nosy students prowling the corridors during holiday, nor professors enough to overcome a battalion of Death Eaters and dementors.

As Severus's hand rested on the knob of his door, a voice called out his name. Severus turned slowly, and the face that met his eyes made him stumble backwards in shock.

_But you died!_ his brain marveled at the grinning man, but found his nerves in such a state of astonishment he could not move.

/\

Hermione tried not to cry as she lay bound on the cold floor. It seemed there could be no hope for her now. It wouldn't be until morning that the Order would realize hers or Harry's absence, and by then she would probably be dead. Death Eaters did not keep prisoners, nor were they merciful to their victims.

A shiver trickled down Hermione's back and settled within her soul as she attempted reason and calm. Her wand was gone and she could hardly move. It had been a miracle she and Harry had even entered the heavily guarded castle, and she doubted the Order would be as lucky as they, should they even try to rescue her.

_And what of Harry?_ she wondered miserably. _Did the man she encountered know what had happened? Would he return to her? _

Her greatest fear was of veritaserum. Hermione did not know whether Professor Snape had completely converted to the side of Voldemort, but she knew that he always seemed to have the truth potion when needed. She could not bear to think of what she might say should she be forced the liquid.

With effort, she managed to sit up, and lean against the wall for support. Her wrists felt raw from the bindings, but she still twisted them hopefully, as if perhaps the fortieth time she tried to wriggle them from their bonds it might prove successful.

After a few moments of struggle she slumped down and, to her great surprise, fell asleep.

/\

"What are you doing here?" Severus asked, keeping the shock in his voice to a minimum. The man drew nearer, his smile growing even larger.

"I have come to direct this chaos as the dark lord would have wanted it," Bartimus Crouch Junior answered nonchalantly.

"Quite unusual, I must say," Severus began, "for I was under the impression you had a rather touching encounter with a dementor three years ago. I believe he was kind enough to give you a kiss?"

Crouch's eyes smoldered with a controlled fury, but his smile did not flicker. He moved a step closer, and added, "I feel rather exposed out in this hallway for such conversation. Would you be welcoming enough to allow me into your… dear me, dare I call it a room? I inherited the Dark Lord's quarters after his disappearance. I must admit, I feel rather spoiled compared to all…"

His voice trailed off as Severus, glaring, swung his door open beyond his office and antechamber. With a sort of triumphant pride he strode in and lit the fireplace with a careless flick of his wand. It takes a course of several years to make a "house a home," to use a cliché phrase, but Severus's had developed quite classically. The bookshelves gripped beautifully aged volumes, frosted lightly with dust, and their titles glinting gold from the firelight. Numerous antique sofas and armchairs circled the hearth with a conversational tilt to them, but a coldness radiated from them as though no guests had delighted in their comfort in years.

Beyond the alcove of books and seating was a small but luxurious dining area, and passed that, a rather inconspicuous door.

"Well, well, well!" Crouch exclaimed, walking gingerly into the room, "I see your home has seen a good deal of gold spent on it."

Irritated, Severus closed the door and locked it with a snap of his wrist, and said coldly, "Tell me why and how you are here."

Crouch smiled mysteriously, and flung himself onto one of the armchairs. "You are, of course aware, that I am an animagus."

Severus, despite his surprise, gave a convincing, curt nod, and Crouch continued, "I served our lord more than anyone else could possibly have done, and he blessed my servitude with the greatest honor. An honor, I'm sure, not even you could conceive." He laughed. " I see your face, Friend, and know that I mean that in the best possible way. You are also of the way our lord nearly reached immortality?"

"Yes."

"I take the form," Crouch began softly, dangerously, "of a snake. Nagini, he called me, after he'd found me. I was his loyal friend, and he never discovered my secret."

"Tea?" Severus asked languidly. _Crouch was the dark lord's repulsive pet?_ The thought was horrifying, and also genius. What better way to learn the dark lord's doings and orders? Tea was just the thing Severus needed the moment to steady himself.

Looking somewhat startled and annoyed, Crouch shook his head. Severus drew himself up a teacup, and took a swig. As an afterthought, he added a touch of brandy, and then turned his gaze back to Crouch, as if signaling him to continue.

"It was an excellent night he chose me. He, that wretch, Wormtail, and myself as Nagini, were resting at the old Riddle house. The old muggle was killed the instant he was caught listening to our plans of sabotaging the World Cup, and then the dark lord turned to his faithful pet. As his soul divided for the sixth time, he channeled it into me."

Crouch paused, obviously reflecting on that night, and then continued, "When a dementor kisses its victim, it extracts the person's soul. My treatment was no different than any other victims, but unlike the others, I had two souls within me. The dementor withdrew Lord Voldemort's soul from me, and thus destroying the horcrux. After that it was a simple task of acting as though I had no soul left. Fudge himself dumped me onto the streets of London, convinced that I would appear just another homeless person in an overpopulated city. The night the dark lord returned to power, I transformed to Nagini, knowing that I must remain in its form for an indefinite time. That Potter filth destroyed the rest of the horcruxes and then our dark lord, but I have returned to take his place."

An insane fire sparkled in the young man's eyes as they darted to look at Severus, who merely took a sip of tea in reply.

"There is quite a powerful resistance. It grows with every day passing. How do you intend on breaking them?"

Crouch stood up and smoothed off his robes. He walked to the door, and then turned back to Severus.

"That is why I have kept a hostage from the Order, and that, my Friend, is where you come in."


	2. The Blacksouth Pocket

Disclaimer: Nothing that is familiar is mine, actually.

Author's Note: Umm . . . Yeah. I know it's been a year since I first published this story, and I just now rediscovered it thanks to a review from a Megan Consoer. So, sorry it's been so long, and I'll try too make it up to you.

Chapter Two

"Damn it, Crouch, you ask the impossible!" Severus spat, putting his hands on the back of the couch he stood behind and leaned in closer to the man the world had thought dead for several years.

Crouch merely gave him a serpentine grin and ambled over to the bookshelf. He gently pulled a volume from the masses and opened it.

Severus said no more. It was Crouch's move, and he knew it. After several arduous moments of Crouch flipping absently through the book, he glanced up at him.

"How many Deatheaters did our lord have stationed here?" Crouch asked absently as he bent his head to better examine a page.

"Seven from the first uprising," Severus began dryly, "and from the time the dark lord returned to power to now he has recruited a considerable amount. The entire Malfoy family -including their ten year old daughter, the Parkinsons, the Goyles, The Greengrasses, the Bulstrodes-"

"I don't want names, Severus," Crouch drawled, tearing his gaze from the book. "I want numbers. The names are irrelevant."

"Two hundred, perhaps," Severus finished curtly. "I haven't counted."

"That means that out of perhaps two hundred, Severus, I have chosen you for this task. You should be honored that I, the new dark lord, have selected you from countless amateurs and little girls. If you fail me, I will be most disappointed."

"You do not know her," Severus hissed, straightening his posture but tilting his head down. His eyes never left Crouch.

"She's a girl, Severus," Crouch laughed, returning his gaze to the text. "Seventeen, eighteen? You've mastered a variety of women for the cause; why should she be any different?"

"That was years ago. Although my charms have not declined with age, my lustful, boyish enthusiasm has," he replied, his voice smoothly sarcastic. Crouch did not catch the humor. He frowned.

"If you do not do this," Crouch started softly, "I will have no qualms killing you. In fact, I shall look forward to it. It would be delightful to start a horcrux collection of my own."

"Forgive me," Severus almost whispered so thick with sarcasm it was alarming that Crouch still failed to understand his subliminal meaning. "But it is hard," he continued, "to take orders from so new a lord when my loyalties have for so long been to another."

Crouch nodded almost sympathetically. "She's locked in one of the cells in the Blacksouth Pocket. You will report to me after every visit and tell me everything you have discovered from her. If rumors of the quickly-growing Order are true, we don't have much time. Keep that in mind, Severus, or I'll remove half your memory so you will have plenty of room for it."

He snapped the book shut and tucked it under his arm. He strode to the door and turned once more to face Severus. He patted the book gently and said, "I'll be borrowing this book. Indefinitely."

Severus let the door slam as Crouch left and then went to his bookshelf. His fingers traced the books on either side of the gaping hole where the volume had been. From The Art of Dueling to Medieval Potions of Defense he paused, wracking his mind to remember what book had nestled between them.

Of Truth Extraction and Protection. That was it.

Damn, he thought contemptibly. Crouch wouldn't expect him to pay a visit to her this evening, surely. Severus threw on his cloak and slipped out of his room.

The Blacksouth Pocket of the dungeons could hardly be called part of the Hogwarts castle. During the construction of the castle, the founders came across a network of caves that they did not have time to fully explore, map, and develop. The caves were difficult to locate unless one knew exactly where the entrance was, and not suitable for fungi cultivating. During the Renovation of 1653 parts of the caves had been turned to prison cells for wizards before Azkaban was built. The prisoners were well-contained in the ink-black corners of the earth, and it was believed that the closer they were to hell, the sooner the devil would come to fetch them. Whether this superstition had any merit was in question, but the fact that every prisoner in the Blacksouth Pocket was driven insane by the darkness and heat, and died within a year of incarceration indeed supported the supposition.

Severus shuddered; he wouldn't wish such imprisonment to a rat, much less a young woman. Whispering lumos to his wand, he slowly entered the blacker depths of the dungeon.

His footsteps echoed eerily off the crudely hewn walls and the wand-light caught the many reflective minerals and stones of the walls making them glimmer and flicker as he passed, almost as if something were alive just on the other side of the rock as it followed him.

Very few things bothered Severus, but walking alone down that corridor as the temperature slowly rose to a hellish level and the moans and tremors of the earth grew louder he found uncontrollable shudders jerking his frame.

He finally reached the iron gates that opened into the Blacksouth Pocket. The chains glimmered with a locking enchantment. Severus hesitated, and then whispered, "Finite incantatem."

The lock fell to the ground, and Severus pushed the gate open, and slipped through. The path continued to wind further and down, but the deeper down he went, the more confused the path became. Dark splotches on the rock wall gave way to smaller tunnels leading to enormous caverns spattered with tiny cells arranged not unlike the honeycombs of a beehive.

Severus continued on, carefully reading the vague directions until finally he reached a fork in the path. To the left was a cave-in. He veered right, and in the gloom and suffocating heat and silence, he heard something. He paused, rigid as a corpse.

He was not ashamed to admit that the Blacksouth Pocket had given him a fright; it affected all the same. When his heartbeat finally slowed enough for him to think, he reasoned the noise was her, and that he was close.

Her breathing was rapid, as if she had just run for hours without breaking. Holding his wand higher, he peered through each metal-grid door he passed. Skeletons and rotted cloth greeted the light in some of the cells, but finally he found a bundle of cloth that was still moving.

Her cloak was dark blue, and she was curled up under it. Her brown hair pooled around the stone by her head, and the fair skin on her face was drawn tightly back around her skull. She looked wretched; Severus could hardly make out the features of the bossy know-it-all he had loathed for so many years.

Unlocking the door with a whisper and a charm, he slid into the cell and knelt beside her. Her breathing was as fast as ever, and her eyelids screwed tight around her eyes as she twitched, trapped within a nightmare or perhaps a memory.

"Miss Granger, wake up." Severus spoke softly, but with great command. The girl, barely eighteen, jerked and screamed as she opened her eyes. She scrambled to her feet and pressed herself against the wall, as if the closer she came to the rock, the less visible she would be.

"You!" she gasped, glaring down at him.

"Yes," Severus responded matter-of-factly. "It is I. No doubt you suspect my intentions are wicked, or perhaps . . . dishonorable?"

"Even if you saved a worm of the sidewalk, I'd mistrust your intentions," Hermione spat. "You killed Dumbledore and betrayed every good person at Hogwarts."

"There were not many good people to betray in the first place," Severus replied, standing up to look down at her.

"Because of you. Because of them. You're nothing but a soulless coward and I hate you with every breath I take."

"Once again, Miss Granger, you accuse people of crimes of which you have no real proof."

"Proof?" Hermione demanded, flabbergasted. "Proof? I need more proof than seeing you leading the Deatheaters and dementors _into Hogwarts_? I need more evidence than that?"

"Things aren't always what they seem, Miss Granger. You, of all people, should have learned that by now," Severus hissed, his voice dangerously soft. In a tone more business-like he continued, "But enough of this idle talk and finger-pointing. You must know by now why you are here."

"Haven't the foggiest," Hermione snarled taking a step away from the cave wall. "All I know is that Harry is . . . that Harry is . . ." She stifled a sob and turned her head away, as if ashamed of showing weakness.

"Finally learning that life can't always work perfectly for little Miss Granger and her two best chums?" He'd taken a step too far, but he didn't care. "Discovered that virtue and some clever spells won't always win you what you want?" He knew he was being unnecessarily cruel, But, God, he thought savagely, I've put up with too much to sympathize for this girl's one loss.

"Go to hell." Her words were cold and controlled. They bit into Severus with blinding accuracy, but he hid all emotion.

"We're already in it, Miss Granger," he finally managed to reply. Without another word he slipped out of the cell and slammed the door shut, locking it behind him with a placidly-spoken incantation.


End file.
